TITLE: Price games fairly, you fat wankers
AUTHOR: Tom Carrick
DATE: 9/26/2005 10:55:00 ip.
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With so many people supposedly updating here you'd expect updates more often, eh.
Following is a quick rant about game pricing, thank you.
Let's say I wanted to buy Fantastic 4. Ok so I actually don't, 'cause I know it'll suck if I do, but for argument's sake let's continue. It'd cost me £29.99. Now, if I was born in a different country, let's say... I don't know, the USA, I'd be paying... $29.99. Wow identical prices!
Or not. Let's see, in USD I'd be paying here $53.56. WHY THANK YOU. Yes, that's right, I could be paying £16.86, which actually *is* an almost reasonable price for a game (I'd say £15 is reasonable for a good GBA game, £10 for not so good GBA game), but no, I pay nearly *double* that because of where I live. No wonder there's such a piracy culture here, I might as well join them.
This has been the norm in the UK for a long time. Consoles, PC, handhelds, it doesn't matter. We pay more for games. The only tiny consolation is that the games we get, since they're released later than the ones from the US and Japan, usually have the bugs ironed out, especially console games. But what consolation is that? I pay twice the price, for what? A patched version? So what? So fucking what?
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DATE: 15:23
The comment before me is just pure spam.
Anyways, this has been picked up at Joystiq.com and will be live at 10am ET.
http://portable.joystiq.com/entry/1234000953061894/
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DATE: 17:31
You lucky ###, in Norway a new console game costs from £43 to £52...
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DATE: 18:32
O come on, in Israel a game costs £43 but whereas the average income in Norway is $45,000 a year, the average income in Israel is $29,868 a year.
So please a little proportion please!
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AUTHOR: censored
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DATE: 19:03
Yes!
I completely agree, and I always admit, If I ever went to Sony/Msoft/Nintendo of Europe, the first thing I would do is demand to see the manager and then punch him. (probably :P)
Really, I am thankful that joystiq blogged this blog (as it were) because at least some people might start to take notice.
We don't deserve to be ripped off.
My adjective(s) would be Fat Bastards, but yours are just as good :P
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DATE: 01:18
Yes, we're ripped off with game prices in the UK, just as we are with cars, electrical goods, music... We're used to it, but game prices are VASTLY inflated here.
Should a game really cost more than DVD? Are development costs really that much more for a video game than a movie?
Things wont change if we stay quiet about it.
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DATE: 01:25
The ridiculous thing is, if they were cheaper, I'd buy more. As things are, a game is a more considered purchase.
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AUTHOR: Tom Carrick
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DATE: 03:55
well, the reason I bothered posting anything here was because it annoys me. I'm on a really low income, shared between three people, and I can barely afford two games a month (which is nowhere, at all, nearly enough for me), and games, PC upgrades, random low-priced goods, and food is all I buy.
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DATE: 14:43
What industries seem to fail to realise is, the more expensive they make their wares (Audio CDs, DvDs, Games, Software), the more people will purchase a multi-layer DvD recorder with some multi-layer blank DvDs, search for a decent bit-torrent site and download the stuff for free.
It's really very easy to do. And inevitably, they will manufacture Blue Laser DvD writers that can write to discs in the same format as the PS3 - so again, game copying will be rife to avoid paying the extortionate costs that we suffer.
In the long run though - people who cheat the government out of the massive tax cut they get on CD/DVD sales by downloading, are actually just ensuring the government hike up other taxes elsewhere to cover the defecit...
We'll never truly be better off until we can get some decent-minded people, who aren't just bothered about their annual (or anal) bonus being 10 times the average salary. People who can actually sort out the crap that our current egotistical idiots have gotten this country into.
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DATE: 15:59
Maybe I'm wrong here, but for a game to be released anywhere in Europe, it has to be localized to 8 languages, right?
If so, it would take a ton more time to work on, and time is money, so you pay more.
If all this is true, England needs to find a way to get out of the European localization, and just get an English localization. If it's copied from the U.S., it's ALREADY localized, and everyone is happy!
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AUTHOR: Tom Carrick
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DATE: 20:31
Localisation isn't the problem. The localisation teams are something like 10-20 people, and their jobs generally take... maybe a few months. It's not really enough to hike the price up.
Oh, and it's not quite localised. Even the word locaized needs to be localised into localised, if you see what I mean. Okay, so this work is pretty trivial, but still, it's there. And I'm a little annoyed when I buy a game from here and it's in American.
Even VAT isn't the problem, 17.5% of VAT isn't enough to double a price.
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DATE: 16:47
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censored
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DATE: 19:03
Yes!